Conventionally, telecommunications services have been provided to subscribers using dedicated channels. That is, for each call, the telecommunications network establishes a pipeline that is not shared with other calls. As technology has improved, the telecommunications systems have adopted various time division multiplexing techniques to allow a number of connections to contemporaneously use the same physical channel. In recent years, virtual connection technology, e.g., Asynchronous Transfer Mode and Frame Relay, has been developed to allow even more efficient use of bandwidth in a telecommunications system.
With a virtual connection, several users share the same physical circuit. Data is transmitted over the virtual connection in data packets or cells. The data packets each have a source address and a destination address that indicate the endpoints of the virtual connection. One typical characteristic of such virtual connections is that the traffic is “bursty.” This means that the rate at which data is transmitted changes with time. To compensate for potential problems caused by the bursty nature of such virtual connections, conventional systems that use virtual connections typically include traffic shapers. The traffic shapers smooth out the data rate so as to be more uniform despite fluctuations in the rate at which the endpoints provide data to the virtual connection. One problem with conventional shapers is that floating point calculations are typically used to control the data rate.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for an improved traffic shaper for virtual circuit connections.